This is New York to me. Autumn winds from the open window, sirens below, you know that special smell when everything is possible? First orange dots on the trees outside, so you put a leather jacket on and head out. Elevator down, 'PLING,' one step out on the street. The flow of cars moving down, tourists moving up, and it's all about the music, so you turn it up and start walking with the beat. Like a music video, you know, don't pretend you haven't ever thought the same thing? It's like a big dirty orchestra, in perfect but rusty harmony... and beneath the stage the subway runs through its dark catacombs and shakes the ground. Here among you, the millions of dreamers are walking, running, talking on the phone with only their eyes meeting one another. One hundred floors of offices above, adding oil to this powerful machinery. You see beauty everywhere where others perhaps don't, like the red bricked alleys with graffiti and trash. You're feeling high from loving this city. You are part of it because it's now part of who you've become. You pass old restaurants you've never heard of, each a little dream of its own (and you imagine the work put into each handwritten menu). You can't help but to look in, couples holding hands, sharing a glass of wine, creations of food from all over the world at your display. You want go on a date with Derek and start all over again. You pass a small park with benches full of old men who exchanged their watches for paper-wrapped bottles a long time ago. You want to listen to their stories. At a red light, you look up and see the historic buildings reach for the old sky, and clouds reflecting in all that expensive glass and metal reaching for the new sky. You notice a silent jet plane cutting through the clouds. And you think: that was me arriving here - HOME - only 12 years ago. --- ❤️
Photo by Bruce Getty with my edit.
